Eldred/Roth: Guide to Marx's Capital (1978)

Appendix III

With Marx against Marx?

Histomat1 and Histomat2 - An Alternative
to Jürgen Habermas' Theses Towards the Reconstruction of
Historical Materialism[*]

by Mike Roth

In this debate it cannot be so much a matter of
criticising false assertions and replacing them with true
statements. For Habermas' theses are principally a research
programme, directed against certain other research programmes. For
me, the dispute is still[1] on the same level as in 1969, which
Renate Damus formulated as "confrontation ... of a Critical
Theory which ... renounces a preoccupation with political economy
and a position which, after being buried for decades, holds this
preoccupation for most imperative".[2] The incompleteness
of the attempts at a presentation within the rival research
programmes admits of discussion only preparatory to systematic
argumentation and in partial anticipation of results which have yet
to be proven.

The question I address is what is to be understood under
reconstruction of historical materialism and what programmatic
direction is indicated by Habermas' reconstruction of
historical materialism? In this connection it is important to
explicitly distinguish two meanings of the term 'historical
materialism'.

'Historical materialism' can be
understood i) as designating that theory whose subject matter is
the historically specific character of the present[3]
form of material reproduction of life, to anticipate the capitalist
form of society (Histomat1 is synchronic).

'Historical materialism' can be
understood ii) as designating that theory which treats the history
of the development of humankind as a chain of class societies
(Histomat2 is diachronic).

Histomat1 and Histomat2 have the common
characteristic that here theory is undertaken with the perspective
of the practical dissolution of, to anticipate, class society. On
Histomat2 on the history of development of class
societies, there are only occasional asides from Marx, apart from
the hitherto scarcely systematically evaluated excerpts on early
history and ethnology from 1880-82. These asides, I claim, serve
Marx mainly as contrasting illustrations for the capital-analysis.
This function is probably also fulfilled by the remarks in the
draft of a general introduction from 1857 to the text Zur
Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, the first published book
of the capital-analysis.

In the Preface to this work of 1858, he states:

"I suppress a general introduction which I had
sketched, since, on closer consideration, to me any anticipation of
results which have yet to be proven seems
disturbing."

'Anticipated' results which have yet to be proven are
strictly speaking, not a result of scientific argumentation.

Next I will try to demonstrate that precisely these favourite
parts of the Preface which are used to support Histomat2
fall to the criticism of the above cited marxian self-critique of
the suppressed 'general introduction'. (I do not shy away
from establishing an inconsistency in Marx which has many later
consequences.) My argumentation aims at the following: Jürgen
Habermas treats as basic postulates of a universal theory of
development (Histomat2) what Marx can only claim as
'results' of his analysis of the capitalist epoch and
therefore related only to capitalism. It seems to me,
firstly, that this analysis is precisely 'the point' and,
secondly, that not only Habermas was led astray by marxian
formulations which go beyond this.

Marx writes in the 1859 Preface with regard to his 'Critical
Revision of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right':

"My investigation culminated in the result that
relations of right, as well as forms of state, are neither to be
conceptualised out of themselves, nor out of the so-called
universal development of the human spirit, but rather are rooted in
the material relations of life whose totality (Gesamtheit) Hegel,
following the precedent of the English and the French in the 18th
century, summarised under the name of 'bourgeois society'
(bürgerliche Gesellschaft) that, however, the anatomy of
bourgeois society is to be sought in political
economy."

Against the transepochal marxian formulation ('relations of
right as well as forms of state'), it is to be emphasised that
here bourgeois society is the object of attention. For Marx
mentions that, following on from bis critique of Hegel, he had
studied the system of bourgeois economy. And regarding these
studies he says: "The general result at which I arrived and,
once won, served as guiding thread to my studies…": here
Marx's studies of the anatomy of bourgeois society are again
referred to. It is important to note that not only 'result'
but also 'guiding thread' relate to the not yet completed
research process.[4] Only after this prelude follows the
'classic' formulation, which is mostly cited in isolation:
"In the social production of their life, humans enter
..."

I draw attention to the fact that this marxian formulation
(relating generally to 'humans') stands in marked contrast
to its prelude, where it is a matter of preoccupation with the
capitalist epoch. The theme becomes, without notice, no longer the
humans in bourgeois society, but generally related to various
social formations and their change.

Thus it is explicitly and concisely said one page later:

"In crude outline, asiatic, antique, feudal and
modern bourgeois modes of production can be designated as
progressive epochs of the economic social
formation."

To me, however, the continuation seems important since it gives
the purpose of the quick marxian view over the history of human
development. Immediately following on it reads:

"The bourgeois relations of production are the
last antagonistic form of the social production process ... but the
forces of production which develop in the womb of bourgeois society
create at the same time the material conditions for the solution of
this antagonism. With this social formation therefore, the
prehistory of human society comes to a close."

The purpose which Marx has in referring to the precapitalist
modes of production is the discussion of the solution of class
antagonism. In this connection, the observation of the intimate
bond between development of the productive forces and tendencies
towards the changing of relations of production belongs to the
discussion of bourgeois society, even though Marx's
formulations are often inappropriately general. Asiatic, antique,
feudal and capitalist modes of production appear as a chain of
class societies from the perspective of Marx's analysis of
capitalist society, which has tracked down the fundamental division
of the working day of the immediate producer into the necessary
labour time for his/her immediate individual reproduction and
surplus labour time.[5] Only when this is presupposed as result,
can one talk of class society. The non-materially producing class
always appropriates the surplus product of the immediate producers.
(This prevalent trait of Histomat2 - class society - is
eliminated in Habermas' theses for reconstruction.)

I want to underline that also with regard to the central
formulations of the 1859 Preface, it is a matter of
'anticipated results'. I think Marx sees himself forced to
such an anticipation for, without reference to the final aim of his
theory, to present the conditions for and resistances against the
'solution of class antagonism', the mediating steps to
those results which have yet to be proven, as tiresome
investigations of apparent 'economic minutae', threaten to
meet with a lack of interest on the part of a politically motivated
general public. Here one should think in particular about the time
of publication of Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie
and its content [6] (see below).

Now that I have indicated why Marx allows himself to go against
his previous explicit attitude to the anticipation of results which
have yet to be proven, I want to touch on what has to be done to
prove them. The marxian anticipation of results can be understood
in two contexts corresponding to the distinction between
Histomat1 and Histomat2: i) in relation to
capitalism (Histomat1); ii) in relation to the chain of
class societies from the Asiatic via the antique and feudal to
capitalist society (Histomat2).

The proof restricted to the bourgeois form of society and its
genesis out of pre-industrial European feudal society as well as
its transition into a fully industrial socialist society - this
proof can only be carried out through the completed analysis of the
bourgeois form of society. With the analysis of commodity and money
which follows the Preface, Marx offers, when one views the entire
analysis which has to be performed, only a tiny initial piece of
the required proof in which, in particular, the specific capitalist
productive forces of labour, the mechanical means of production and
therefore also the base-superstructure thesis, the "dialectic
of productive forces and relations of production", as well as
the "unity of theory and practice" are not treated at
all.[7] In relation to the analysis of bourgeois
society, the base-superstructure passage of the Preface is
therefore a claim which still has to be substantiated according to
the architecture[8] indicated at the beginning of the
Preface.

"I treat the system of bourgeois economy in the
order: capital, landed property, wage-labour, state, foreign trade,
world market."

With 'capital, landed property, wage-labour', the three
revenue sources are mentioned whose investigation completes the
analysis of 'capital in general' available in the three
systematic volumes of Capital. As a detailed draft[9]
by Marx, it can sensibly be taken as the object of efforts at
reconstruction. In the last decade, such attempts have been
published in West Germany by the Frankfurt theoreticians Alfred
Schmidt, Hans-Georg Backhaus, Hans-Jürgen Krahl, Helmut
Reichelt; by the Konstanz Research Project[10] in which I
have worked; the Berlin Group Project around Joachim Bischoff;
Jürgen Ritsert (Frankfurt); the Marxistische Gruppe
(Arbeitskonferenz) in Munich; and Wolfgang Fritz Haug (Berlin).[11] In relation to bourgeois society, the
base-superstructure thesis, which is treated as the kernel of
historical materialism, can only be substantiated through the
reconstruction of the general capital-analysis and its continuation
in a theory of the superstructural forms which is grounded on the
capital-analysis.[12]

The present state of research into Histomat1 in my
view, offers grounds for optimism regarding the scientific
demonstration of the results anticipated by Marx with respect to
our capitalist society. The marxian anticipation in programmatic
phrases, when explicitly demonstrated as result, can be grasped in
a less misunderstandable way and with well defined area and grounds
of validity.

With this I have done nothing more than to express an
expectation. That isn't much. I want to draw attention to the
fact that Jürgen Habermas' theses have implicitly the
contrary expectation as their point of departure. I don't
believe that Habermas has for this alternative assessment, an
argument at his disposal which I don't have. The matter can
only be settled by a convincing working out of the
capital-analysis. One way or the other. To be consistent, Habermas
would have to work out the capital-analysis "as a
subtheory" of historical materialism in the sense
reconstructed by him.[13]

The background of our opposed expectations, however, is
differerent. Habermas and Wellmer have already criticized [14] the marxian value theory several years
ago. They have not yet taken a position on the answer given in 1969
to this critique. On the other hand, they have not followed the
attempts at reconstruction of Capital undertaken since
1971, at least not directly and without having explicitly taken an
attitude towards them.

Now to the marxian anticipation of results when one understands
it in its second context. There is a striking difference: in
relation to Histomat2, there is nothing following up the
hints and claims strewn by Marx in various places which could be
conceived even provisionally as an outline of a systematic
presentation. (On this point Habermas has the same opinion[15].) The treatment of
Histomat2 by Engels, Lenin and Stalin have in no way the
same scientific status as Marx's Capital. They are in
part quickly 'thrown together' (hingehauene) (Engels)[16] works of intervention or apologetics
for a definite politics (Stalin).

Viewed with a scientific eye, these 'classic' texts on
Histomat2 prove themselves to be in part internally
inconsistent, and partly as standing in contradiction with the
marxian postulate that the economic structure constitutes
the basis. This holds not only for the ambitious Engelsian text,
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State,
which earlier was much read by social democratic workers (Erhard
Lucas has brought together material for its critique)[17] but also in particular for a
publication by an official Party writers' collective under
Stalin's leadership, On Dialectical and Historical
Materialism[18](1938 distributed in an edition of 200
million), as the commentary by Iring Fetscher shows.

From the fact that Habermas does not take up anything
substantive out of the classical texts of Engels and Stalin, I
conclude that we agree in our low estimation of them. If that is
so, then it is misleading with respect to the development of
humankind when going backwards from the capitalist epoch to, in
particular, the early historical[19] development of humankind,
to represent the programme as a "reconstruction of historical
materialism". For what is to be reconstructed? Not Marx and
also not Stalin.

To summarise so far: Jürgen Habermas can support his
programme for reconstruction on an inconsistency[20] which has eluded Marx. The point is to
explicitly criticise this weakness in Marx by taking up Marx's
systematic course of argumentation and not, following the model of
the official marxist party orthodoxy, to make this weakness into
the receptacle for a relatively capricious filling out of the empty
formula Histomat2, be it in the form of reflections on
mating groups and incest (as in Engels) or the compilation of
learning-theoretical, developmental-psychological,
communication-theoretical aspects of the development of
humankind.

Thoughts on the history of humankind which have been stimulated
by the occasional 'classical' statements by Marx cannot, in
view of the totally shaky status of Histomat2, be served
up as 'reconstruction'. It should by now have become
questionable whether Habermas in fact undertakes a reconstruction
of Marx. The next question is then, what is the relation between
the habermasian research programme within Histomat2 and
what can be called 'reconstruction of historical
materialism1' (understood as a methodologically
explicit[21] reconstruction (Nachkonstruktion) of
the capital-analysis and the execution of the transition to the
theory of the bourgeois state and private life[22]? I have the
impression that at the end of the sixties, at the high point of the
student movement, Habermas came to a dead end with his own attempts
at reconstruction of the capital-analysis and that Habermas and
Wellmer therefore formulated their results as a critique of Marx.
However, they have not directly answered the anti-critique[23] of their critique nor the subsequent
more recent attempts at reconstruction. Rather, Habermas now tries
to get over the problem with his version of the development theory
Histomat2.[24]

In conclusion I want to offer for discussion some thoughts on
the relation of Jürgen Habermas' considerations to the
marxian theory of emancipation from class society, which proceeds
from the analysis of the capitalist form of social synthesis
(Vergesellschaftung). Like the contemporary (positivist and
anti-positivist) theory of science, Habermas obviously also wants
to see a very extensive piece of theory come before the
preoccupation with capitalist society. With the theoreticians in
theory of science, this piece is a doctrine of scientific speech,
abstracted altogether from the object of the theory of capitalist
society. With 'Critical Theory' a la Habermas 1975, we have
a development theory over epochs, a doctrine of human development
in general. The capital-analysis remains in this universal
development theory - and herein lies the parallel to the marxist
orthodoxy - but only with the status of a "partial
theory" (Habermas). Consequently, this partial theory would
have to be newly formulated in the framework of the universal
development theory Histomat2. And herein lies the real
point: the ostensible efforts at reconstruction on closer
inspection prove themselves to be a revision of the claim to
autonomous validity made by Marx for the capital-analysis. For, the
criterion for the testing of the validity of Capital in
future is to be provided by the purportedly systematically prior
universal development theory. Here too, the procedure has the same
model as the 'reconstructions' of the positivist and
anti-positivist[25] theory of science.

But is that a deficiency?[26] Does that constitute a
knock-down argument against Habermas? I think that through such
references connections can only be made to scientific,
scientifico-political and political experiences which can be
distinguished among the disputers. In particular, it depends on the
degree of optimism held for the possibility of the reconstruction
of the capital-analysis as an analysis of the boundary conditions
of action for the emancipation from class society, whether the
habermasian research programme, which diverges strongly from the
marxian programme, should be pursued or not.

I personally see in Habermas' theses on a modified version
of a development theory Histomat2 no occasion for
interrupting or restructuring the work on the reconstruction[27] of Marx's analysis of the
"anatomy of bourgeois society". If the reconstruction and
completion of Histomat1, the systematic theory of
bourgeois society, should actually succeed, the following questions
can be posed. To what extent is it necessary to have a development
theory alongside the systematic theory of our form of society,
which contains the conditions for and resistances against the
emancipation from class domination? What would this development
theory look like, and why should we bother ourselves with it?

Footnotes

[*] Translated by Michael Eldred in consultation with
the author from the original 'Mit Marx an Marx Vorbei?
Histomat1 und Histomat2' in Ist
Systematische Philosophie Möglich? Stuttgarter
Hegel-Kongress, 1975, Dieter Henrich (ed.), Bonn, 1977.
Habermas' essay 'Thesen zur Rekonstruktion des Historischen
Materialismus' appears in the above volume and in Zur
Rekonstruktion des Historischen Materialismus, Frankfurt a.M.
1976. An English translation is contained in Communication and
the Evolution of Society, Ch.4, London 1979. Emphases in
passages cited by the author have been changed or added without
notice.

[1] Emilio Agazzi told me that "a deficit of the
Frankfurt School inpolitical economy" was also expressed by
American and Italian theorists at a colloquium on the reception of
Critical Theory in the Starnberg Institute, December 1980.(Cf, also
Iring Fetscher's foreword to Reichelt Zur logischen
Struktur des Kapitalbegriffs bei Karl Marx, Frankfurt
a.M.,1970, pp. 10f; "Subtle in the uncovering of hidden
reaction in the representatives of the left bourgeois people's
front, inventive in the discovery of secret protest in the
apolitical artists of L'Art pour L'Art, Critical Theory
remained deficient in the actualisation of the Marxian critique of
the economy. Some of its representatives prematurely held this
critique to be obsolete because they overlooked the necessary
distance from the 'general concept of capital' to the
apparent phenomena of the economic sphere. Unconsciously,
feudalistic questions of status may have played a role in this
neglect. 'Economics is dirty.' "

[3] Capitalism is also, with respect to those
societies which understand themselves as socialist, in their
connections to world trade and in a series of internal
"birthmarks of the old society", a still-present
reality.

[4] That the research process is not yet complete is
expressed in the above formulation from the Preface: "That,
however, the anatomy of bourgeois society is to be sought in
political economy." This research process is, however, nothing
other than a series of attempts at a presentation. The most
important attempt at a presentation to which Marx can refer in 1859
are the Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen
Ökonomie (Rohentwurf 1857-1858) first published Moscow,
1939.

[5] Today (1981), I would not formulate class
exploitation in terms of periods independent of the value-form. Cf.
Roth/ Kleiber/Hanlon/Eldred, Die gedoppelte Verdopplung: Zum
Ausbau des Marxschen Systemfragments, forthcoming.
Form-independent formulations are of importance for
Histomat2, which strives to make its categories
transepochal. Such formulations are central for an understanding of
the fascination of the workers' movement with
Histomat2 ("All previous history was a history of
class struggles.").

[6] From the viewpoint of the politically interested
reader, the political relevance was to become stark with the third
chapter, 'Capital', which is not contained in the
1859 work Zur Kritik. "For with Chapter 3 the real
battle begins." (Marx to Lassalle, 28.3.1859, in Briefe
über 'Das Kapital', p. 99) On the other hand,
Marx wanted to impress his bourgeois critics with his scientific
achievement before letting "the kernel of the bourgeois
shit" (Marx to Engels, 7.11.1859, Briefwechsel, Vol. II,
Berlin 1949, p. 531) out of the bag: "... it appeared to me
advisable not to horrify right from the beginning
..." (Marx to Lassalle, 28.3.1859, Briefe
..., loc.cit.). With this strategy of holding back
"Chapter 3", Marx wanted to "force the dogs later to
take my views on capital rather seriously" (Marx to Engels,
c.13.1.1859, Briefe…, p. 94). The political content
of Zur Kritik, which contains two chapters on Commodity
and Money, is contained in the critique of "Proudhonian
socialism, now fashionable in France, which wants to let private
production stay, but organise the exchange of private products;
which wants to have the commodity, but not money ... Communism
must, above all, free itself from this 'false
brother'." (Marx to Weydemeyer, 1.2.1859,
Briefe..., p. 96) This critique, together with the
analysis of "the commodity, of the specifically social, in no
way absolute character of bourgeois production." (Marx to
Engels, 22.7.1859, Briefe…, p. 100) is what Marx
wanted Engels to bring out in a review of Zur Kritik (cf.
ibid.).

Engels however, was far more impatient than Marx with regard to
the political impact of Marx's theory: "The undelayed
appearance of your second book (the continuation of Zur
Kritik, tr.) is ... of course most important ... For once be a
little less conscientious with your own work; it is still much too
good for the lousy public. That the thing gets written and appears
is the main thing; the weaknesses which occur to you won't be
discovered by the asses in any case; and when troubled times start,
what do you win from the fact that the whole thing becomes
interrupted before you are ready with capital in general?"
(Engels to Marx, 31.1.1860, Briefe…, pp. 100ff.) In
his review of Zur Kritik published in 1859, Engels goes
even further than Marx in the anticipation of results for the sake
of political effect. The materialist postulate that being
determines consciousness becomes a statement which "is so
simple, that everybody must be able to understand it on its
own", although, he is quick to add, "... it is
plain as day that one cannot make anything out of the mere
phrase". (MEW 13, pp. 470, 471.) For Engels, however, the
proof of the results lies in "massive, critically viewed,
completely mastered historical material". See Backhaus,
'Materialien zur Rekonstruktion der Marxschen Werttheorie
3', in Gesellschaft 11, 1978, for a discussion of
'logical' and 'logical-historical' modes of
presentation, (tr.)

[8] On changes in architecture cf. the preface of the
Marx-Engels institute, Moscov to the Grundrisse, and Roman
Rosdolsky, The Making of Marx's 'Capital',
London, 1977, pp. 10ff.

[9] The first volume of Capital (first and
second editions) were prepared by Marx himself for the press. The
third volume is taken from a draft of 1864-65. An examination of
the manuscript in the International Institute of Social History in
Amsterdam reveals that, in his posthumous edition, Engels has stuck
close to the single draft. For the second volume, there are over
ten manuscripts. Engels comments on these in the Preface to the
second volume. A careful investigation is contained in Ivan Glaser,
Warum 'Das Kapital' ein Torso blieb (Why
Capital Remained a Torso), Habilitationsschrift,
Universität Konstanz, 1980. With regard to the second volume
it is still an open question whether plausible alternatives to the
engelsian edition could be given.

[10] Since the 1975 Hegel Congress, the author has
spent a year in the Department of General Philosophy, Sydney
University as a guest lecturer (1976), during which time a
collaboration with the translator began. Since then, the research
project has straddled the distance between Konstanz and Sydney,
resulting in Eldred/Roth Guide To Marx's
'Capital', London 1978, and the forthcoming Roth
et.al.

[14] In the meantime, the Konstanz-Sydney Project
has also come to a critique of the labour theory of value which
consists of separating a labour content theory from an analysis of
the value-form. Cf. Roth et.al., and Eldred/ Hanlon,
'Reconstructing Value-Form Analysis', in Capital &
Class, No. 13, London, 1981.

[19] Habermas' jump from Marx to Engels/Stalin
may disguise the fact that in the marxian listing of
"progressive epochs" in the 1859 Preface, the
"primitive community" does not appear, in his extensive
text for the preparation of the colloquium, essential parts of
Habermas' considerations relate precisely to the
"neolithic revolution" and earlier epochs of the
development of humankind. Habermas does not go explicitly either
into the relation of the capital-analysis (Histomat1) to
his own reflections on the theory of development
(Histomat2), nor does he treat the relation of
Engels' text, The Origin… ., which is taken to
be a classic of Histomat2, to Marx's excerpts, on
which Engels presumably bases himself. The way in which this
happens has been represented in a flattering light by Krader, to
whom Habermas refers, and in an unflattering way by Lucas, who
obviously is unknown to Habermas. Cf. fn. 6.

[20] An inconsistency insofar as it says that to
Marx, "on closer consideration, every anticipation of results
which have yet to be proven seems disturbing". Above, I have
indicated why Marx, in spite of this, lets himself be moved to an
anticipation.

[21] Here, the way of argumentation which, in the
analysis, leads to the various contents should always be given in
discussing these contents. Cf. Eldred/Roth Guide, pp. 9ff, and
Eldred, 'Material Dialectics and Socialist Polities',
Thesis Eleven, 2.

[22] Cf. footnote 10, but note that the references
given there (apart from Roth et.al.) have no analysis of the
private sphere.

[26] In such 'systematically prior'
preludes, it is a matter of the separation of 'dialectical
method' from dialectical theory. It seems that Habermas and
Wellmer still represented Adorno's position in Der
Positivismusstreit in der deutschen Soziologie,
Maus/Fürstenberg (eds.), Neuwied and Berlin, 1970. See
Adorno's introduction. On the occasion of the awarding of the
Adorno Prize to Habermas on September 11, 1980, Michael Theunissen
remarked (it seems not without irony): "On the way, Habermas
has distanced himself from Adorno, and the oeuvre on which he can
today already look back on owes its richness more to the
emancipation from the common heritage than to faithfulness to him.
It's true that he has thought of his teacher several times. But
since, on such occasions, he speaks a different language, to a
certain extent, than usual, the estrangement is revealed. The
differences in the language games which the teacher and his former
pupil have practised, point to a difference in the respective
representative works. Adorno, the emigrant, was to the last at home
in German philosophy, whose language participates in the formation
of his thought. Habermas, still in the country in spite of all the
animosities, has opened himself to the Anglo-Saxon spirit and
thereby to a language which passes on finished thoughts in the most
precise way. In any case, always ready to work over something new
and, apparently, almost limitless in his learning capacity, he is
particularly receptive to this spirit, thanks to the analytical
sharpness of his own thinking. His great insights are based on
distinctions such as in behaviour theory between
purposeful/rational and communicative action, labour and
interaction, the differentiation of purposeful/rational action into
instrumental and strategic, the marking off of all action from
discourse. To the thought of Adorno, however, such analytics is
just as alien as is the contructivist tinge which in Habermas'
development, to this point, has come forward ever more strongly. As
the starting point of the path on which Habermas has won more and
more distance from Adorno, we can view, in this simple
presentation, his contribution to the positivism dispute in German
sociology. Habermas still fights on Adorno's side against
Popper and his school. There he represents a dialectical theory of
society as totality. Born out of the spirit of Adorno, this social
theory is firstly dialectical, secondly, knowledge of the totality,
and thirdly, above all, a diagnosis of the contemporary social
formation. Just how much this theory frees itself from its heritage
in its progression can be read in its increasing
de-dialectification (Entdialektisierung) for which it is telling
that its author silently takes back the once rejected separation of
is from ought." This trend is presently on the increase; cf.
Honneth/Jaeggi, Arbeit, Handlung, Normativität: Theorien
des Historischen Materialismus, 2, Frankfurt, 1980.